Thirty years after the first Internet addresses were created, the supply of IP address officially ran dry with the recent announcement that the global pool of IPv4 address space has been exhausted, and China has a chance to show some leadership in IPv6 deployment in Asia-Pacific, Asia Pacific Network Information Centre (APNIC) Director General Paul Wilson said here in an interview with Xinhua on Tuesday.

An international body responsible for the management of Internet protocol addresses announced on Feb. 3 that the five remaining IP address blocks were shared equally among the world's five regions, Wilson said.

With the allocation, the addresses, known as IPv4 or Internet Protocol version 4 are likely to be depleted soon. The touted solution to this problem is a switch to a new system called IPv6 that allows trillions of Internet addresses, while the current IPv4 standard provides a meager four billion or so.

"China is a huge (Internet) manufacturing base, and its potential for explore IPv6 technology has already been seen. China is a partner, a suppler, and a customer which has got a huge role in potential leadership on IPv6," Wilson said.

The IPv6 deployment is being actively used in China with a very promising future deployment, he added.

China's potential leadership in IPv6 deployment can been seen from its leadership in developing Internet technologies, providing Internet services and in providing a high-level connectivity between China and the rest of the world.

"So there is a really huge opportunities for China's role as an Internet power to increase through IPv6," said Wilson.

He said that there are three stages in the transition process from IPv4 to IPv6 in the region, and now we are at the second stage to make IPv4 allocations from its free pool as per current policy for another four to six months, until the final/A IP address is activated, signaling the start of the third stage.

"We're being told that the gasoline supply is running out, so it is important for the energy supplier, the petro station owner and the driver to make necessary adaptations to switch from petro to electric vehicles, while as for the passengers can just sit back and enjoy the road," said Wilson.

Therefore, the effort of changing to IPv6 would fall mostly on Internet service providers, websites and network operators, but the Internet users shall not notice the changes.

When ask to predict for the transition period, Wilson said it will take two to five years from now, and "we will have a Internet that is much better, much bigger, and much capable as a result."

Meanwhile, Google's Vice President and Chief Internet Evangelist Vinton Cerf shared similar thoughts at a press conference held here on Tuesday. He said that the adoption of IPv6 is the long-term solution, with IPv4 will most likely to run out in regions by 2012. "What I think important is concentrating on getting the job done, which is not deeply hard, but very meticulous," he said.

The APRICOT-APAN conference (Asia Pacific Regional Internet Conference on Operational Technologies and the Asia-Pacific Advanced Network) was held in Hong Kong on Feb. 14-25, attracted more than 800 delegates around the world to discuss policies and technical developments that will shape the future of the Internet.

As one of the conference's organizers, APNIC is the regional registry for East Asia (including India), Australia and the Pacific islands, in charged with ensuring the fair distribution and responsible management of IP addresses and related resources.

LONDON - China has shot into second place in the world in terms of the number of scientific articles that are published in international magazines and the country's scientists are set to take the top spot from the United States in the next few years, according to a new report.

"China has already overtaken the UK and is the second leading producer of research publications, but some time before 2020 it is expected to surpass the US," said the report from the Royal Society in London.

While the top 10 is still dominated by major Western powers, their share of published research papers is falling, it noted.

Brazil and India are among countries that are quickly making their way up the list.

"The US leads the world in research, producing 20 percent of the world's authorship of research papers, dominating world university league tables, and investing nearly $400 billion per year in public and private research and development," said the report, which was released on Monday.

"The UK, Japan, Germany and France each also command strong positions in the global league tables, producing high quality publications and attracting researchers to their world-class universities and research institutes."

China was in sixth place between 1999 and 2003 (with 4.4 percent of the total) but shot up to the second place with 10.2 percent for the years 2004 to 2008, overtaking several countries, including Japan, which had been in second place.

While the US remained in top spot, it saw its share shrink from 26.4 percent to 21.2 percent.

"China's rise up the rankings has been especially striking," said the report.

"China has heavily increased its investment in R&D (research and development), with spending growing by 20 percent per year since 1999 to reach over $100 billion a year today."

The investment amounted to 1.44 percent of the country's GDP in 2007.

"China is also turning out huge numbers of science and engineering graduates, with 1.5 million leaving its universities in 2006," said the report.

The Royal Society's findings were in a report entitled Knowledge, Networks and Nations: Global Scientific Collaboration in the 21st Century.

In a related development, the number of domestic applications for invention patents in China rose by 27.9 percent in 2010 compared to 2009, said a senior patent official on Tuesday.
The country received more than 391,000 applications for patents for inventions in 2010, the second-largest number worldwide, said He Hua, deputy director of the State Intellectual Property Office.

Chinese applicants also submitted 36,000 patent applications abroad between 2006 and 2010 -- under the Patent Cooperation Treaty -- which ranked fourth in the world, he said.

China investigated 56,000 trademark rights infringement cases in 2010, an increase of 9.78 percent year on year, an official said on Sunday.

During the 11th Five-Year Plan period (2006-2010), a total of 265,000 cases concerning trademark violations had been investigated, an annual average of 53,000 cases, said Fu Shuangjian, vice director of the State Administration for Industry & Commerce.

Protecting trademark rights is crucial to carrying out national strategy on intellectual property rights (IPR) protection, and to promoting innovation, Fu told a press conference on the sidelines of the national parliamentary session in Beijing.

Fu said China would further clamp down on trademark violations and strengthen supervision over online shopping, targeting fake goods.

According to the Ministry of the Public Security, 3,001 people involved in IPR violation cases have been arrested since November for producing and selling counterfeit goods or spreading pirated videos and softwares online.

Chinese police launched a special campaign since November, targeting at fake goods ranging from food, medicine, cosmetics, to electronics, home appliance, and DVDs.

The police have busted 2,546 production dens of counterfeit goods and 1,132 criminal rings connected with the sale of fake goods, worth 4.5 billion yuan (680 million U.S. dollars), said the ministry's report distributed at the press conference.

In particular, the police targeted websites providing counterfeit and pirated goods, and had shut down 292 such websites in the crackdown, said the report.

Meanwhile, the police kept a stern line on faking famous brands, seizing copied goods worth 300 million yuan (45 million U.S. dollars), including fake Louis Vuitton bags and Rolex watches.

An online shop operated by a person surnamed Xu was closed after Hunan police found 26,000 mobile phones faked as popular Nokia and iPhone handsets were sold nationwide.

The inter-ministerial crackdown would last until the end of this month, but Li Chenggang, head of the Department of Treaty and Law under the Ministry of Commerce, said related departments were considering an extension of it.

He added that the government's eventual goal was to establish a long-term protection mechanism instead of resorting to frequent crackdowns.

China's top industry and commerce administrator has pledged that every effort will be made to protect trademarks registered by overseas firms amid a growing number of applications.

Zhou Bohua, minister of the State Administration for Industry and Commerce (SAIC), said the administration will boost its campaign to curb trademark violations in cooperation with judicial departments.

"Overseas firms are encouraged to report violations to us and we will take immediate action upon receiving the report," he told China Daily.

Commerce and industry authorities dealt with 265,000 such cases during the 11th Five-Year Plan (2006-2010) period, with about 20 percent, or 53,000 cases, concerning overseas firms, according to official statistics.

The number of foreign firms reporting trademark violations rose by 10 percent year-on-year to 11,524 in 2010.

In 2010, the Walt Disney Co won a lawsuit against a manufacturer of children's clothing in Shenzhen, Guangdong province, for using the world-famous "Mickey Mouse" image, winning 500,000 yuan in compensation.

Overseas companies and organizations have so far registered more than 500,000 trademarks in China, Zhou said.

Foreign firms seeking trademark licenses in China can opt for one of two routes.

They can submit applications through agencies or apply through the Madrid System for the International Registration of Marks - the primary system for registration in multiple jurisdictions throughout the world.

China has been a member of the system since 1989.

In 2010, overseas companies submitted 68,000 applications through agencies and 31,000 through the Madrid System.

The biggest number of applications came from the electronic and garment sectors, which accounted for 17 percent.

The United States, Japan and Germany were the top three countries for submissions, making up 50 percent of all applications.

The SAIC also sought international cooperation to prevent Chinese trademarks from being used by overseas companies, especially online through cybersquatting, Zhou said.

Cybersquatting involves using a domain name to profit from the goodwill of a trademark belonging to someone else.

Domestic companies submitted some 2,100 trademark applications through the Madrid System in 2010, half of which were from owners in Zhejiang and Guangdong provinces.

The SAIC wants to encourage Chinese companies to aim for 8,000 overseas applications in the next five years, Zhou said.

In the last three years the government has slashed the time it takes to get a trademark license from 36 months to 12 months.

Zhou said his administration will reduce this to 10 months in the next two years.

Wang Qian, a professor at the Intellectual Property School of East China University of Political Science and Law, said most Chinese companies have yet to grasp the importance of trademark registration and lag far behind their foreign competitors.

"That's a major reason why Chinese companies applied overseas far less than foreign companies did in China," Wang said.

A government official said Thursday that China's crackdown on infringements of intellectual property rights (IPR) had scored successes and China would work harder to protect the rights and interests of Chinese and foreign trademarks.

Since the Chinese authorities launched a campaign in October to improve the protection of IPR, a total of 3,010 cases of infringement and counterfeiting had been reported, said Fu Shuangjian, Vice Minister of the State Administration for Industry and Commerce (SAIC).

The crackdown had also resulted in the revocation of 103 business licenses in the country, said Fu at a press conference.

Li Jianchang, head of the department of trademarks with the SAIC, said at the briefing that a total of 38,000 applications for trademark registration have been rejected for infringing existing trademarks, including foreign ones, during the two months.

"We will work hard, as always, to safeguard the interests and rights of the trademarks of both Chinese and foreign-invested enterprises," Li said.

In the five years from 2006 to 2010, Chinese authorities had dealt with 242,000 cases of infringement and counterfeiting of trademarks, and foreign trademarks were involved in 49,000 cases, Fu said.

In the name of fighting pollution, China has sent the price of compact fluorescent light bulbs soaring in the United States.

By closing or nationalizing dozens of the producers of rare earth metals — which are used in energy-efficient bulbs and many other green-energy products — China is temporarily shutting down most of the industry and crimping the global supply of the vital resources.

China produces nearly 95 percent of the world’s rare earth materials, and it is taking the steps to improve pollution controls in a notoriously toxic mining and processing industry. But the moves also have potential international trade implications and have started yet another round of price increases for rare earths, which are vital for green-energy products including giant wind turbines, hybrid gasoline-electric cars and compact fluorescent bulbs.

General Electric, facing complaints in the United States about rising prices for its compact fluorescent bulbs, recently noted in a statement that if the rate of inflation over the last 12 months on the rare earth element europium oxide had been applied to a $2 cup of coffee, that coffee would now cost $24.55.

An 11-watt G.E. compact fluorescent bulb — the lighting equivalent of a 40-watt incandescent bulb — was priced on Thursday at $15.88 on Wal-Mart’s Web site for pickup in a Nashville, Ark., store.

Wal-Mart, which has made a big push for compact fluorescent bulbs, acknowledged that it needed to raise prices on some brands lately. “Obviously we don’t want to pass along price increases to our customers, but occasionally market conditions require it,” Tara Raddohl, a spokeswoman, said. The Chinese actions on rare earths were a prime topic of conversation at a conference here on Thursday that was organized by Metal-Pages, an industry data firm based in London.

Soaring prices are rippling through a long list of industries.

“The high cost of rare earths is having a significant chilling effect on wind turbine and electric motor production in spite of offsetting government subsidies for green tech products,” said one of the conference attendees, Michael N. Silver, chairman and chief executive of American Elements, a chemical company based in Los Angeles. It supplies rare earths and other high-tech materials to a wide range of American and foreign businesses.

But with light bulbs, especially, the timing of the latest price increases is politically awkward for the lighting industry and for environmentalists who backed a shift to energy-efficient lighting.

In January, legislation that President George W. Bush signed into law in 2007 will begin phasing out traditional incandescent bulbs in favor of spiral compact fluorescent bulbs, light-emitting diodes and other technologies. The European Union has also mandated a switch from incandescent bulbs to energy-efficient lighting.

Representative Michele Bachmann of Minnesota is running for the Republican presidential nomination on a platform that includes strong opposition to the new lighting rules in the United States and has been a leader of efforts by House Republicans to repeal it.

China says it has largely shut down its rare earth industry for three months to address pollution problems. By invoking environmental concerns, China could potentially try to circumvent international trade rules that are supposed to prohibit export restrictions of vital materials.

In July, the European Union said in a statement on rare earth policy that the organization supported efforts to protect the environment, but that discrimination against foreign buyers of rare earths was not allowed under World Trade Organization rules.

China has been imposing tariffs and quotas on its rare earth exports for the last several years, curtailing global supplies and forcing prices to rise eightfold to fortyfold during that period for the various 17 rare earth elements.

Even before this latest move by China, the United States and the European Union were preparing to file a case at the W.T.O. this winter that would challenge Chinese export taxes and export quotas on rare earths.

Chinese officials here at the conference said the government was worried about polluted water, polluted air and radioactive residues from the rare earth industry, particularly among many small and private companies, some of which operate without the proper licenses. While rare earths themselves are not radioactive, they are always found in ore containing radioactive thorium and require careful handling and processing to avoid contaminating the environment.

Most of the country’s rare earth factories have been closed since early August, including those under government control, to allow for installation of pollution control equipment that must be in place by Oct. 1, executives and regulators said.

The government is determined to clean up the industry, said Xu Xu, chairman of the China Chamber of Commerce of Metals, Minerals and Chemicals Importers and Exporters, a government-controlled group that oversees the rare earth industry. “The entrepreneurs don’t care about environmental problems, don’t care about labor problems and don’t care about their social responsibility,” he said. “And now we have to educate them.”

Beijing authorities are creating a single government-controlled monopoly, Bao Gang Rare Earth, to mine and process ore in northern China, the region that accounts for two-thirds of China’s output. The government is ordering 31 mostly private rare earth processing companies to close this year in that region and is forcing four other companies into mergers with Bao Gang, said Li Zhong, the vice general manager of Bao Gang Rare Earth.

The government also plans to consolidate 80 percent of the production from southern China, which produces the rest of China’s rare earths, into three companies within the next year or two, Mr. Li said. All three of these companies are former ministries of the Chinese government that were spun out as corporations, and the central government still owns most of the shares.

The taxes and quotas China had in place to restrict rare earth exports caused many companies to move their factories to China from the United States and Europe so that they could secure a reliable and inexpensive source of raw materials.

China promised when it joined the W.T.O. in 2001 that it would not restrict exports except for a handful of obscure materials. Rare earths were not among the exceptions.

But even if the W.T.O. orders China to dismantle its export tariffs and quotas, the industry consolidation now under way could enable China to retain tight control over exports and continue to put pressure on foreign companies to relocate to China.

The four state-owned companies might limit sales to foreign buyers, a tactic that would be hard to address through the W.T.O., Western trade officials said.

Hedge funds and other speculators have been buying and hoarding rare earths this year, with prices rising particularly quickly through early August, and dipping since then as some have sold their inventories to take profits, said Constantine Karayannopoulos, the chief executive of Neo Material Technologies, a Canadian company that is one of the largest processors in China of raw rare earths.

“The real hot money got into the industry building neodymium and europium inventories in Shanghai warehouses,” he said.